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The 3 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Makes in Their Fitness Warm-up

Most traditional warm-ups are seriously flawed. Let’s examine three common mistakes that people make preparing for their workout.

Mistake #1 – Aerobic Activity Before Weights

It takes only 10-15 seconds of muscular contractions to raise body temperature by 1ºC and a proper warm-up should raise body temperature by 1-2ºC, just enough to cause sweating.

In fact, simply going through the motions of any exercise is sufficient to supply blood to the appropriate working muscles.

Just a few repetitions is all you need to really warm-up the muscles; aerobic activity is not necessary, and will zap valuable energy and time.

Instead of aerobics, perform the following dynamic stretching routine before a workout. Start slow and shallow and gradually increase speed and range with each repetition; 5-10 reps per movement is all you really need.

Dynamic Stretching Routine:

Squat

Split Squat

Toe Touches

Waiter’s

Side Bends

Trunk Twists

Arms Vertical

Arms Vertical Alternating

Arms Horizontal

Arm Circles

Wrist Flexion/Extension

Wrist Circles

Shoulder Shrugs

Mistake #2 — Static Stretching Before Weights

Numerous studies reveal that muscle stretching will inhibit maximum strength and power. In fact,acute static stretching can decrease strength and power of the stretched muscles by as much as 5-30 percent for as long as 90 minutes. By then, your workout is over! Dynamic stretching, on the other hand, is useful to simulate the velocity of your training and will help rev up the nervous system in preparation for activity.

The only time you should even consider static stretching before weight training is if you have some extremely tight muscles that, essentially, need to be turned off. The law of facilitation is often recited when referring to these tonic muscles as they tend to rob the neural message during movement. For instance, if you experience rounded shoulders and you plan to work your back, it may be a good idea to stretch out your chest to liberate greater range of motion when rowing or pulling.

Since static stretching will disrupt the optimum contraction length and temporarily weaken the fibers, it would be wise to use this form of stretching on antagonistic muscles (such as the chest) prior to working the agonists (which is the back in this case.)

Mistake #3 — Too Many Repetitions

In essence, specific warm-ups provide practice sets where you can rehearse proper form and technique. Doing too many repetitions during any warm-up will increase lactate levels and decrease strength and performance.

If that’s not bad enough, people actually get injured when they do high reps for a warm-up. Research indicates that pec tears from benching are linked to too many reps in a warm-up.

Simply perform the exercise that you wish to train – pyramid the load upwards until you reach your working weight and keep the reps below 6 (between 1-5 repetitions works best.)

It is better to do more sets at low repetitions than low sets at high reps during a warm-up!

Research shows that there are better ways to increase strength during your workouts – the art is being able to apply that science to your training. Remember, the goal of a proper warm-up is performance, not fatigue!

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